This year is the 50th anniversary of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. The program was created after public interest was sparked by a story in the "Washington Daily News" in late 1949. A journalist had contacted the FBI about doing a feature on the "toughest guys," being pursued by the Feds. The FBI gave the reporter ten names, and a giant headline later, the Ten Most Wanted list was born.

Also created was a weird partnership between the FBI and the media. The list is maintained, as the FBI admits, as a media stunt, a way to personalize crime, a pantheon of bad guys.

Who the bad guys are depend as much on the prevailing social and political climate of the times as any special danger posed by those on the list. The list has changed as the FBI's web page says, "just as the priorities of the FBI have changed. Through the 1950s, the list was primarily comprised of bank robbers, burglars, and car thieves. Once into the radical 1960s, the list reflected the revolutionaries of the times with destruction of Government property, sabotage, and kidnapping dominating the list. During the 1970s, with the FBI's concentration on organized crime and terrorism, the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives included many fugitives with organized crime ties or links to terrorist groups. This emphasis, along with serial murders and drug-related crimes, continues today."

As the nation's political police, the FBI has always been involved in social engineering. The Ten Most Wanted is the centerpiece of that mythology. The list is the law enforcement's guide to fashion, new and old. The FBI doesn't like to retire criminals from the list. With entries nearly twenty years old, it is sort of like an archaeology of crime and media.

The list of course now has its own website. While it's technological toolkit has expanded from post office walls, the list has not lost is frighteningly quaint outlook. This year the FBI has teamed up with Dick Tracy to publicize the pictures and names of the current ten most dangerous criminals. Readers are invited to "look closely at the pictures of these fugitives."

It's damn creepy. Look closely as you want, you're not going to see anything but comic strip criminals, of little use in making a positive ID. These fugitive visages are not photos, they are cartoon drawings. Specifically, they are Dick Tracyized cartoon drawings. Each one of the ten has been transformed into a caricature of himself, criminality oozing from every pore. Supercriminals, hiding out on the edge of the popular imagination.

The real list is little better. It's like being trapped in an age enhanced photo of 1950 all over again. It's like a Dragnet almanac, a compen of aliases, occupation, race, and personal habits of the criminal class.

There is the racketeer who is an "avid reader" and "has been seen frequenting libraries and historic sites." But he is also "known to have a violent temper and posess a knife at all times." There is the African-American revolutionary with "needle tracks on both arms" and who "may have AIDS." The Latino drug trafficker who "considers himself to be a ladies' man," and "tends to wear expensive slacks, cowboy boots and gold chains."

Almost everyone on the list is there to stand for some greater idea. It's not the person that is so unusually dangerous, it is the trend or demographic they represent. The fugitives are added to the list as a hook for the agenda of the administration in power. From "revolutionaries," like Angela Davis and Leonard Peltier, to the terrorist Osama Bin Laden, the list sensationalizes the anti-crime programs of the day. It is rarely unique personal circumstances that get someone on the list. It is how their inclusion can serve the FBI and the administration.

By making the criminals sexy, the FBI bolsters its own image. Sexy crooks take sexy lawmen to catch them. By including international terrorists and "masters of disguise," among the top ten, the FBI plays to the Dick Tracyization of its image.

Find Dick Tracy at www.fbi.gov